Louise’s thin lips pursed into an indiscernible line. Clearly,
she wasn’t amused that Jane had the nerve to think for herself. This withered woman, who looked twenty years older than she was, had played the game her entire life, and she was damned if some bitch with a badge and a brain was going to jump the invisible barriers and not play along. “Aren’t you a silly child,” Louise muttered with an elitist rise of her brow.
Jane leaned forward. “Is that how you’d describe Jake?”
Louise thought about it. “No,” she said offhandedly after a few seconds. “He was ignorant of the way the world works.”
“Was?” Jane asked.
“Isn’t it a foregone conclusion, detective?”
“That he’s dead?” Jane’s tone was a blend of incredulity and rage.
“Yes.”
“No, it’s not.” Jane’s ire was spiking. “I was brought in from Denver to bring him back alive.”
“No, you weren’t. You were brought in to investigate and arrest the most likely suspect who is clearly unbalanced, has a disgusting criminal record and is guilty.”
“What if all trails don’t lead to Jordan Copeland’s door?”
“Then he’s working with someone. The sooner we get him back into a prison cell, the sooner we can put this to bed.”
Put this to bed
, Jane thought. For fuck’s sake, what in the hell was going on in that bony head of hers? “So, we collar Jordan and we throw him in the box. But what if he doesn’t cop to your grandson’s kidnapping? What if he doesn’t admit that he’s aligned with anyone else who might have Jake? What if it’s a dead end? Where does that leave Jake?”
“How many mysteries don’t get solved, detective? How many bodies are never found? I’m afraid that resignation has become a familiar bedfellow for me…especially now.” Her voice was off in the distance, dangling far away from her body.
Jane stood up. She wasn’t going to be dismissed this time.
This time
she was walking out on her own volition. “Well, Mrs. Van Gorden, I haven’t rolled over yet on this case. And I’m sure
as hell not planning to do so in the near future. You see, I actually feel that whoever took Jake
wants
to be found.” Jane detected a stiffening of Louise’s gaunt face. “And it’s my intention to give him exactly what he wants.” She nodded toward Louise who returned the gesture with a stern glare of disapproval. But before Jane opened the French doors, she turned around. “I would think you’d want some resolution regarding your grandson before you die.”
Louise fiddled with the hem of her sweater sleeve. “Resolution is a myth. The book is never closed. We just play out the same scene in different clothes and different settings.”
“That’s absolutely true.
Until
someone speaks up and blows the fucking lid off the lies.” Jane would never have couched a statement that way to the grandmother of any missing child. But
this
grandmother seemed to be seriously lacking both grief and compassion.
Instead of the statement eliciting fury, Louise simply smiled and shook her head. “Since no one has the balls or sufficient gunpowder to blow a feather in the air, it’s highly unlikely we’ll ever find out what happened to Jake.” She gazed out into the yard. “And then all we’ll be left to say is…so sad…too bad.”
CHAPTER 19
Jane felt like she needed a shower as she descended the Van Gorden’s driveway and returned to her Mustang. She left Louise in the back courtyard where she asked to be left alone. Carol solemnly walked Jane to the door while Bailey, ever the gentleman, stayed behind his office doors talking on the phone.
Popping the Mustang into gear, Jane maneuvered slowly down the winding road and left Blackfeather Estates. As she drove, she recalled the haunting admission that her friend Kit
Clark told her the previous year. Dying of lung cancer, Kit was convinced that she’d given herself the disease as a result of unresolved anger and grief over the death of her beloved granddaughter. When the subject of liver cancer surfaced, Jane remembered Kit referencing “unresolved anger and guilt.” During one episode when Jane fell off the wagon, Kit was relentless, warning Jane that her vengeance would “swell up and eat away” at her body one day if she didn’t find the middle ground and a more peaceful approach.
In the fifteen months since that fateful encounter, Jane read numerous books that Kit left her, all featuring mystical, philosophic and mind/body themes. The central thesis throughout was that whatever the mind believes, the body responds to in kind. If you think the world is an evil, hateful place, you will attract that reality along with the people who mirror that belief. Eventually, your body will shut down because hatred grows in the soil of discontent and then a myriad of ailments can surface—some aggravating, others deadly.
Suppression, Jane learned, was the first nail in the coffin—suppression of a dream, a love, an emotion…a secret. Whatever is suppressed or hidden, she learned, ironically becomes the eight-hundred-pound gorilla inside the body screaming to be acknowledged. The more it’s ignored, the more it growls and tears at the fabric of the body. Keep ignoring it and as one’s anger grows—built on a foundation of guilt, resentment and sense of being trapped—the disease takes hold. Once that happens, the gorilla cannot be ignored any longer because the damage he’s done is made manifest in a way one can physically see.
But, from what Jane was able to fathom from the pages of Kit’s books, if you understand this cycle and release yourself from the choke hold of suppression, anger and all the other emotions that pull you down into the pit of hell instead of lift you up, you can find that elusive freedom everybody talks about. The point was
to feel
; to experience life with an open heart and mind; to shed the fear that feeling was dangerous.
The point was also to speak up and not deny what you’ve seen or what you’ve felt and shun the lies when they are sold erroneously as the truth. If a person could do this, they could move through life with greater ease and a sense of purpose, unlocking the manacles with the key they’ve held all along.
It all sounded so ridiculously simple on the page. But putting it into practice and remembering it when life served another bitter plate, was quite another. Jane’s thoughts turned to Louise Van Gorden and she pondered what secrets the old, bitter woman had suppressed. There was that callous
What’s the use?
mentality Louise favored, as if it was a foregone conclusion that Jake was dead or would be killed. And that statement that “What’s cooked at home is eaten at home”? That spoke volumes to Jane—keep everything under the roof and don’t expose it while you continue
life as normal.
What a twisted, fucked-up attitude. If this was the world that Jake inhabited, it’s no wonder he didn’t fit and rankled against his surroundings. It’s no wonder the boy may have been drawn into the disreputable grasp of someone else who he might have thought was a friend but who turned out to be his doom.
Jane continued driving down the two-lane highway but she couldn’t get Louise’s sickly vibe off her. It was like watching death personified. The dark shadows perched around the old lady were palpable, like vultures waiting to feast on her corpse. Fear rose up in Jane’s throat as she drove down the highway; fear that all the changes she consciously made over the last fifteen months were falling short and that she was speeding toward the same end as Louise. She’d always gone through life with a sense of duty, first to her younger brother and then to every victim she encountered. When Louise grumbled that “you find out that life is about duty and obligations to those around you who you can’t stand but you put up with” and then “you forgot who you are and what you wanted because you’re drowning in other’s people’s nightmares,” Jane related to every word. As cold-hearted as the ol’ broad was, Jane understood her. At the
age of thirty-seven, was it already too late to turn it around? Had the die been cast and was her fate to have the word
terminal
stamped on her medical sheet and
cancer
cited as the cause of her premature death?
Jane pulled quickly to the side of the two-lane highway and turned right into a secluded stand of trees. Overwhelmed, she fell across the steering wheel, sobbing. Every bit of control she’d fine tuned over the years was gone. Every judgment she’d professed was coming back to kick her in the teeth. She was at the mercy of an invisible hand that she couldn’t see but that seemed bent on destroying her. For ten minutes, she cried like she’d never cried before. She cried harder than after any of the beatings she’d been dealt as a child. Within the sobs, the misery and pain were more profound than when she lay bloodied and battered on her father’s workshop floor at the age of fourteen. And she felt more alone than any of the countless times she drank herself unconscious, begging God to take her.
After ten minutes, she sat back in the seat exhausted. Where once there was fullness, there now was an empty hole. Everything she thought she knew, now she wasn’t so certain. The rawness engulfed Jane, causing her to doubt herself. As she sat in her car, she felt suspended over her body, like an observer with no memory of who she was staring down on. The scab had been ripped off the flesh and underneath was the tender, exposed pulp yet to take shape and transform. To stay in this intangible suspension was impossible. But it seemed difficult to render her body back inside the shell. Just as another wave of fear began, Jane sensed that peripatetic aroma of gardenias. This time, it was strong and nearly overpowering. A gentle, comforting warmth embraced her. But there was also a sense of being pushed to rise up from the pit of despair—a blend of love mixed with firmness. Jane held her hand out toward the passenger seat as tears welled in her eyes again. The aroma nearly choked her and her hand burned with a seeming connection to another world. Was it the one she loved from so long ago who took his
life? Or another? There were too many dead souls to choose from and who might want to haunt her now. She couldn’t help remembering the sentient words that Jake wrote:
The dead are following me.
At that heart-pounding moment, Jane knew that the dead were closing in on her as well.
As much as she wanted to fall into the void, something bade her to turn to the left. Within seconds, a black SUV sped down the highway, heading out of town. It belonged to only one person—Bailey Van Gorden. There was that sense within Jane that his destination was tainted. The shield of gardenias evaporated and she was back into her body once again and gunning the Mustang onto the highway. Bailey never saw her vehicle so he wouldn’t know it was Jane tailing him as long as she kept sufficient distance. Once she was in cell phone range, she dialed Weyler and told him that she was heading up toward Highway 7 to search for the elusive “Imperial” address she found in Jake’s locker. Fortunately, he didn’t argue and even wished her luck.
It was easy to keep both a bead on Bailey and stay far behind him once they emerged onto a wider section of the highway where other cars helped protect the blue Mustang from view. As Hank told her, the landscape on Highway 7 was fairly remote, dotted with a few campgrounds, vacation cabins, ranch houses and a lone Catholic chapel, built on a rocky outcropping, all separated by several miles. Mount Meeker rose up in front of Jane as she clocked nearly thirty-miles. About half a mile up, she saw Bailey turn left, along with two other cars. She followed him another five miles until he entered a small mountain town the size of a breadbox. There wasn’t any name for the town; no welcome sign at the entry point. It appeared that the economic downturn had certainly hit this place hard and fast. Buildings were boarded up and two of the three gas stations were abandoned. The only thriving businesses Jane noted were a video/convenience store, a handful of fast-food drive-thrus and a small market. She continued to carefully follow Bailey down the town’s only street, wondering where in the hell he was
headed. At this rate, it would soon only be the two of them on the road and then she’d be easy to spot.
But once Bailey turned right and drove half a block, any concern that they were alone was quashed. On the right side of the road, surrounded only by a large parking lot and miles of grassland, was a strip club called The Cat House Lounge. It was 4:00 pm and the Saturday night crowd was converging with gusto at this isolated islet of lascivious satisfaction. Jane drove past Bailey’s black SUV and parked the Mustang in the far opposite corner of the jam-packed lot. Not knowing what she might encounter inside, she opted to keep the Glock in her shoulder holster, hiding the gun by buttoning her jacket around it. From the looks of the crowd heading inside, she was probably going to be the only woman in the place who wasn’t buck-naked.
The Cat House Lounge was one of those seedy joints that spared no expense on stage lighting but kept the audience pretty much in the dark. It lent a lewd sense of privacy that most men sought from joints like this. They could sit in the shadows in a public place and still be anonymous to the guy seated two feet away in the darkness. Just in case the men forgot where they were, the sleazy club had a red neon sign in script that glowed
The Cat House Lounge
behind the stage. Appropriately, the last three letters in
House
had blown out turning it into the
The Cat Ho Lounge
. Jane doubted any of the men in the large audience observed the obvious irony of the neon faux pas since they were far too busy staring at the three girls prancing through the glittering silver curtains at the back of the stage and taking their place at their respective pole.
Overhead, the speakers blasted Aerosmith’s potent tune, “The Other Side,” heavy with so much bass that Jane wondered if her inner ear was going to split. Two of the girls on stage gave new meaning to “rode hard and put away wet.” But the third girl stood out to Jane. She was a vibrant dancer with shoulderlength blond hair, porcelain flesh and breasts that were still young enough to be the personification of “perky.” While the
other two strippers performed their routine in a trance-like stupor, this young wild child worked the room, posing, primping and teasing the men with astonishing ease. She owned her corner of the stage. When she stripped down to only her bra and thong and crawled along the perimeter of the stage like a hungry cat, men nervously slipped dollar bills into what material was left on her body. She made each and every one of them feel as if they were her favorite and the poor, lonely men believed her. Using the music to her advantage, she waited for the most climactic moment before stripping off her bra, unhooking her thong and working the pole upside down with only her four-inch Lycra heels to keep her attached. The other two strippers didn’t seem to care or notice that this kid owned the show and was getting the bulk of the tips as well as a few business cards tossed in for good measure. Jane had to hand it to the girl. She may have been young, but she was already corrupted and savvy to the disparity between the erotic dancer and the male voyeur. On some level, she knew how much sexual power she had up there. No matter what sordid life lay behind her, no matter who abused and abandoned her, when she danced on that stage and stood nude in the flashing stage lights, she was in charge and the helpless men were just cash beacons to fire up and manipulate. And the girl took advantage of every lonesome, desperate heart because deep down, she despised men. With every dollar they tucked into the buckle of her shoe, the hatred within her grew but the men would never believe that. To them, she was the animalistic ideal of sexual perfection. To her, they were the epitome of all the people who had molested her and left her with no choice but to dance naked in a desolate, dodgy, roadhouse club.